The medina of Kairouan, one of the most revered Islamic cities in North Africa, is also one of the oldest in all of Islam. In 1977, the year the ASMK was established to safeguard the architectural, cultural and historical heritage of the medina and to undertake necessary restoration and rehabilitation, the ancient city was in an advanced stage of neglect, abandonment and misuse. Most of the important monuments had been converted into makeshift dwellings and were in danger of collapse. Since its founding the ASMK has restored all of the medina's major landmarks, built for the most part in the 9th and 10th centuries, numbering seven mosques of various sizes, three suqs, seven mausolea, one caravanserai, one well structure, a large water reservoir and the city's ramparts and gates. Among the contemporary institutions now housed by the restored mausolea and mosques are a school for the deaf and dumb, a social information office, a centre for diabetics and a museum of popular arts. Ongoing work includes the rehabilitation of public squares, street façades and private residences. ASMK has been careful to use ancient or traditional methods and materials realised by local craftsmen, and wherever possible, original building materials were recycled. The jury noted that "the programme sets an excellent example for adapting an existing urban fabric to contemporary requirements."

Istanbul possesses a splendid collection of palaces and pavilions left behind by the Ottoman sultans. All were nationalised in 1924 by Atatürk through the Grand National Assembly of the Turkish Republic. The buildings date from the late Ottoman era and were erected between the early-18th and late-19th centuries. Among them are six that have been opened to the public since 1983: the palaces of Dolmabahçe, Beylerbeyi and Yildiz, and the pavilions of Aynalikavak, Ihlamur and Maslak. Designed by architects trained in Europe, the buildings were filled with European furniture and art, as well as European textiles of local manufacture. In 1983 a regional directorate of the National Palaces Trust (NPT) was created to maintain, repair and open the palaces and pavilions to the public, and restore the gardens and grounds to their original layouts in accordance with plans stored in 19th-century archives. The NPT consists of architects, engineers and researchers engaged in the documentation of the contents of the buildings, and the related study of the Turkish art and architecture of the two centuries during which they were constructed. In addition, the agency includes a technical unit of carpenters, builders, restorers and gardeners. Although the restoration techniques applied to the six buildings are not of uniformly high quality, this failure loses significance when measured against the immense cultural importance signified by the act of transforming into public spaces for gathering, entertainment and education once derelict and abandoned palaces, pavilions and gardens from Istanbul's historic past. The jury observed that "in the increasingly congested cities of the Islamic world, this is a powerful model for the efficient re-use of otherwise undervalued spaces and resources."

Cultural Park for Children, Cairo, Egypt

Architect
Abdelhalim Ibrahim Abdelhalim, Cairo, Egypt

Client
Ministry of Culture, Cairo, Egypt

Community
Residents of Abu al-Dahab Neighbourhood, Cairo, Egypt

Completed in 1990

The Cultural Park for Children is located in Sayyida Zeinab, a poor and derelict, although historically significant neighbourhood in the centre of medieval Cairo. Built on the one hectare site of a former garden, existing trees and shrubs, including an avenue of palms, have been preserved within an engagingly complicated geometric scheme, based in part upon the geometries of the nearby Ibn Tulun Mosque and other important Mamluk and Ottoman monuments in the district. The park includes libraries, studios, rooms with computer and video games, playgrounds, fountains and several settings for the performing arts. The park's boundaries are particularly well designed. Low walls penetrated by arched openings and an entrance gate border a principal thoroughfare. This avenue intersects a secondary street lined with facilities built along the park wall, including an outdoor cafe, street fountain, small shops, seats, a community room and library, a prayer space, a large festival plaza, a clinic and other community services. The jury noted that "the insertion of the park into this congested urban fabric has gone far beyond the original brief. It has generated a renewed sense of community by extending its presence into the surrounding streets. The residents take pride in their neighbourhood as well as their park."

In 1980 such informal settlements as East Wahdat, built by squatters on privately owned land, comprised about one quarter of all new housing development in the city of Amman. On these sites the urban poor built basic shelters of corrugated iron tacked to wooden frames. Because the occupants had no legal right to build and lacked secure tenure, no public or private investment in basic infrastructure, schools or health facilities had been provided. The Urban Development Department (UDD) was established in 1980 to formulate and implement its first project, the upgrading of East Wahdat, under the auspices of the Municipality of Amman. The general objective of the project was to improve living conditions for one of the most marginal urban communities in the city. The goal was to devise affordable measures that might be replicable elsewhere in Jordan. The land was bought from the original owners and mortgaged to the householders with monthly instalments based on 33% of the income of each beneficiary. Over a ten-year span UDD provided over 500 serviced plots, accommodating 5,000 people, with water and electricity, paved roads, footpaths, shops, workshops and community facilities. Each well-built new house is provided with a sanitary core connected to the main sewer. East Wahdat now has a health centre, a clinic, a mosque, a park and a community centre. Funds were organised through the World Bank (31%), the Government of Jordan (25%) and the Housing Bank (44%). In the words of the jury: "The project planners (UDD) through their financial and managerial policies have enabled the community to create an environment that responds to their social and cultural needs."

Kampung Kali Cho-De is an informal village settlement built on government-owned land on the banks of the river Cho-De. The site had been used as a refuse dump. The inhabitants comprise 30 to 40 families whose members do menial labour in the nearby city market. All the squatter dwellings originally consisted of plastic sheet covered cardboard cartons which disintegrated, along with the site itself, with each hard rain. By 1983 the government was about to demolish the settlement, but persuaded by two men - community leader and area sector chief Willi Prasetya, and writer, former Catholic priest, and self-taught indigenous architect Yousef B. Mangunwijaya - it allowed upgrading to commence instead. The pair of community advocates also induced two local newspapers to provide financial help. Design and construction commenced in 1983 and was completed within two years. The design process required few drawings and no construction documents. The steeply sloping narrow site was shored up by a series of stone retaining walls. Because the refuse had been compacted over many years to form a firm base for light-weight construction, wood "A" frame stilt houses could be supported on simple conical concrete footings. Bamboo posts were used for joists and plaited bamboo for walls and floor covering. Roofs are corrugated iron or tile. Three carpenters and two masons were employed from rural villages, the remaining labour force comprising the tenants and volunteers. Guided by volunteer art students, tenants painted the exteriors of their houses using traditional animal, plant and monster motifs. The jury found that although "the scale is small, yet the achievement within the given constraints is immense and humane - a compelling model for the world at large."

The stone building system developed by the three Muhanna brothers - two architects and one engineer - offers a new, challenging approach to construction in Syria. Their system is based on the belief that a variety of rural building types, including one- or two-floor level houses and schools, should be made of the regional basalt stone, found in abundance on farm land, rather than of reinforced concrete frame with cement block infill, as is now the custom. Since no imported steel is used in the Muhanna system, and the local basalt stone can be inexpensively gathered and sorted, the cost of construction can be greatly reduced. Four schools designed by the Muhannas in southern Syria were built for one-third less than the cost of typical contemporary construction. For these schools stone was gathered within a radius of 15 kilometres of the site, separated by size and roughly shaped as necessary by hand tools - the small stones being used for the vaults and the larger for foundations and walls. The vaults, essentially traditional stone arches reinvented with the help of computer technology, were erected by unskilled labour on demountable timber or metal shuttering. Each school is composed of classrooms and corridor segments spanned by five-metre-wide vaults. The jury found the stone building system as applied to the four schools "a strong design, a wise plan, and a rational product which can be applied to all other types of rural construction where stone is available."

The first phase of the development of Demir Holiday Village, 9 kilometres north of Bodrum on Mandalya Bay, consists of thirty-five vacation houses designed for middle-class Turkish families, constructed on 2.7 hectares of a 50 hectare site sloping upward toward a national pine forest reserve and downward to a Mediterranean beach. If a proposed airport is built nearby, further development of the 50 hectare site may comprise hotels, 500 houses, conference and exhibition facilities and shopping centres. The land was acquired by the architect Turgut Cansever who is developer, designer and executor of the village. The quality of the project lies in the unique and comprehensive view of architecture that Cansever brings to it. He has a simple objective: to combine excellence in layout and building with commercial viability. In constructing the first thirty-five houses he sought variety of form and massing, the orientation of each villa toward the sea and a common architectural language based upon Greek, Byzantine, and Ottoman precedents. Construction materials consist of local stone, wood and limited use of exposed concrete, a modern contribution to the architectural heritage of the area. Since its inception the village has been shaped by environmental concerns - namely conservation of trees and soil, exclusion of cars wherever possible, protection of the shoreline from erosion and the sea from pollution. The jury found the village "refined yet simple. The well crafted, beautifully sited houses set a high standard for architectural design, craftsmanship and commercial land development."

In 1978 the Panafrican Institute for Development (PID) commissioned the Association pour le Développement d'une Architecture et d'un Urbanisme Africains (ADAUA) to design and build the future campus of the PID in the Sahel, at Ouagadougou. Founded in 1965, the PID is an international African organisation whose goal is to promote integrated, participatory development among the rural and urban populations of sub-Saharan Africa. It is a non-profit organisation without governmental support. The ADAUA, founded in 1975, is composed of about 40 architects, engineers, economists and managers, most of them African, who build in poorer areas. The objectives of the PID for development in Africa coincide with those of the ADAUA. In planning the new campus, both organisations wished to demonstrate the creative potential of local materials and their appropriateness to the socio-cultural context and the climate of the Sahel region. They also sought to demonstrate potential applications for local mass housing and indicate the roles the community can play in the building process. The campus structures consist of three distinct groups: nine professors' houses, student lodgings and the teaching centre which includes library and restaurant facilities. The buildings form a dense urban-like fabric, focusing inward around courtyards. The latter, of varying sizes, shaded and often planted, provide privacy, natural ventilation and coolness. The PID is entirely built of stabilised earth bricks. The earth was procured from land approximately 3 kilometres from the building site. The cement used for stabilisation (the only imported material) came from Togo. The jury believes the PID to represent "one of the most impressive contemporary realisations in stabilised mud brick in Africa. It is a modern work that makes use of improved inexpensive materials and intermediate building technologies, a good example of architectural ingenuity and technical virtuosity."

The Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII) was established in 1983 to augment the country's supply of entrepreneurs through education and training. In 1985 EDII held a national competition to design a new campus of its own, won by the young architect Bimal Patel who is unrelated to EDII Director Patel. The campus consists of residential facilities, classrooms, offices and a library, organised within seven buildings linked by two axes. An auditorium, to be built in the future, will complete the master plan. Because Ahmedabad was founded in 1411 by Muslims who endowed the city with a splendid mix of mosques, mausolea, courtyard houses, labyrinths of public thoroughfares and alleys, private cul-de-sacs and gates, Patel's design for the campus was strongly influenced by his wish to establish a connection with this rich accumulation of India's past. The architect's organisational principles, as well as his use of a very limited palette of building materials - exposed brick, stone and wood with a minimal application of reinforced concrete, steel trusses and corrugated aluminium sheet - directly reflect their traditional Islamic sources. The jury commended Patel "for his confident use of formal elements growing out of the Indo-Islamic architectural heritage. A series of geometrically structured courtyards and loggias are the primary organising framework. The variation of open, closed and transitional spaces provides light and shade, and creates an inviting environment for work, interaction and repose."

Aga Khan Agency for Microfinance

Microfinance for Women in Northern Pakistan

Since its establishment in 2005, the Aga Khan Agency for Microfinance (AKAM) has taken over 25 years of microfinance activities, programmes and banks that were administered by sister agencies within the AKDN. The underlying objectives of the Agency are to reduce poverty, diminish the vulnerability of poor populations and alleviate economic and social exclusion. more